I Didn't Know
Dissociation has taken a lot of things away from me. I have massive gaps in my memory, both long-term and short-term, seemingly for no reason. But it has also shielded me from a lot of things; things that were too hard for my child brain to comprehend. It's fascinating how you can go for years without knowing a single thing about it, and then one day, the memory is right there, crystal clear in your mind, as if it was planted there. You question it – how is this even possible? – and think you must have just made it up and it was probably nothing. But the memory persists, it will not leave you alone, and every time it comes back to you, there is a pit in your stomach, and you feel it in your bones.
To Forget Is To Protect
Every time I talk about the daily abuse I was facing in my childhood and my parents are listening to me, they always say this one thing to me.
"If you had just told us how things were really like, we could have done so much more."
Gaps & Corrupted Film
I used to have a stunning memory when I was younger. I was able to memorize insane amounts of pointless information like the flags of all European countries, but also some very useful stuff like what the deadline for the most recent Finnish and literature assignment was. As a Kid, I had my classmates come to me for homework – not in the way that I'd do it for them, but in the way that I'd remind them of the pages and exercises we were supposed to complete for our next math lesson.
Is It Midnight Already?
They say that time starts to go by faster as you get older. The general explanation for this phenomenon seems to be how you start to get accustomed to life and the way it works: you form your personal routines that consist of getting up in the morning, eating, taking care of your hygiene, going to work or school and the like. Every passing day is kind of the same, unlike when you were a child, everything was so new and exciting, the world was waiting for you to explore it. Every time you went to school, you learned something new, and each day was its own special experience. You were eagerly waiting for the holiday season to roll around, just to see what kind of presents you get this year and how the nature around you might change her clothes from the summer green to autumn yellow and eventually winter snow white. In a lot of ways, children are the only group of people who seem to consistently appreciate the small things in life, the beauty of nature, the way fire crackles in the fireplace, the excitement of summer break after a long school semester.